First was the easy part, my QB dashboard was already set up, but how do I display it without toolbars etc? I simply copied the URL of the 'page preview' of the dashboard.
Second, I set up a Raspberry Pi with a 24" monitor. Its helpful to have a USB keyboard and mouse during set up. I bought a
screen hanger for cube walls that was a great find.
Third, I downloaded and installed a Raspbian OS called FullPageOS
here. This I installed onto the Pi's memory card using Win32diskimager.
Fourth, I set up the FullPageOS. While the card is still in your PC:
- There are two files to edit on the memory card to set your dashboard page (fullpageos.txt) and your wifi settings (fullpageos-wpa-supplicant.txt ... or use a network cable and skip).
- Put it in the Pi and fire it up with keyboard & mouse attached. You'll have to navigate away from your dashboard to log into QB to make it active (I use a extra QB account, not mine). When you reboot you'll still be logged in and the dashboard screen should be okay.
Fifth, I need to make it update on an hourly basis. There are two ways of doing this:
- Dan Diebolt has a easy script you can add to your dashboard via a code page you can call refresh.html
- FullPageOS has a script that you can activate to refresh the browser. This requires using SSH to connect to the running Pi, not exactly a low-coder's favorite thing to do. If you do this, then you edit the cron job queue by typing "crontab -e", then adding this line to that document: "*/59 * * * * /home/pi/scripts/safe_refresh &> /dev/null" to refresh every 59 minutes.
That may not cover every detail, but a pretty good roadmap for anyone else who is going to do the same. Nice project to impress the boss for about $200.
